You are here

ELL News Headlines

Throughout the week, Colorín Colorado gathers news headlines related to English language learners from around the country. The ELL Headlines are posted Monday through Friday and are available for free!

Get these headlines sent to you weekly!

Note: These links may expire after a week or so, and some websites require you to register first before seeing an article. Colorín Colorado does not necessarily endorse these views or any others on these outside web sites.

Pennsylvania teens Marlo Johnson and Emmanuel Garcia had big dreams. Marlo was accepted at a liberal arts college. Emmanuel planned on being the first in his family to go to college. The credit crisis changed all that. Claudio Sanchez spent a year with them as they scrambled to pay for college in a recession.

English-language learners have the lowest scores on the California Exit Exam and the lowest rates of college attendance in the state. Zhuanyi Deng hopes to change all that. Deng is part of a group of Cantonese-speaking low-income students who went to high school largely unaware that they had to take a certain set of courses to be eligible to attend the University of California or California State University. They are determined not to let other students meet the same fate.

The Chavez sisters found themselves strangers in a strange land. Edith, Rubi, and Blanca left the little municipality of Turicato, Mexico, and joined their father, Jose, in Columbus, GA more than five years ago. After a lot of hard work, on Saturday night at the Columbus Civic Center, Edith and Blanca graduated from Spencer High School.

A few months shy of her 10th anniversary on the federal bench, Sonia Sotomayor flew to a law conference across the country from her native New York to give a speech that explored her ethnic identity and her role as a judge in strikingly personal terms. She evoked childhood memories: pigs' feet and beans, the sound of merengue at family parties, Saturday-night bingo games with her grandmother calling out the numbers while the children used chickpeas to mark their cards.

When you think of sushi, you probably think of raw fish. But sushi isn't just the most famous Japanese dish outside of Japan, it's also an art form. <em>Hiromi's Hands</em> is a picture book biography about one of the first female sushi chefs in New York City. It's also a great resource to help celebrate Asian Pacific American Heritage Month.

As her classmates chatted in Spanish, Edith Guerra carefully fashioned her daughter's graduation cap using sheets of thin cardboard and a hot-glue gun. Then she added the final touch: a handmade tassel of shiny, red string. It was Wednesday morning, just weeks from a commencement ceremony for the group of young, Hispanic mothers and children in an acclaimed early education program called Avance, which aims to help "at risk" families — including new immigrants — break cycles of poverty and illiteracy.

Judge Sonia Sotomayor, President Barack Obama's choice for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court, has ruled on a variety of issues with implications for education during her 17 years on the federal bench, including cases relating to racial matters, students with disabilities, and the strip-search of adolescents. Several Washington-based organizations that track developments in education law said today they were still reviewing Judge Sotomayor's record for better clues as to the direction she might seek to bring to the high court.

In her Learning the Language blog, Mary Ann Zehr writes, "President Obama's nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor, is someone with whom English-language learners may be able to identify in classroom discussions about current events. Sotomayor spoke more Spanish than English while growing up, according to news coverage by WABC-TV New York."

Thousands of people, including multi-generational families from across the region and around the world, converged on Ramsey Creek Park in Cornelius, NC recently for the 10th annual Asian Festival and 4th Annual Dragon Boat Festival. "The festival celebrates Asian cultures and is an opportunity for the Asian community as a whole to open our doors to the entire community," said Dr. John Chen, who organized the first festival.

After voters rejected ballot measures that would have restored state funding for schools, educators across California on Wednesday braced for $5.3 billion in cuts over the next 13 months. State and district officials predicted increased class sizes, additional teacher layoffs, more school closures and fewer arts and music offerings. Some districts could face insolvency.